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Review: Angel Dust by Sarah Mussi

Would you move heaven and earth for the one you love? ANGEL DUST is a powerful, gritty and utterly modern tragic love story with a twist. When Serafina, the brightest and most beloved of all God's angels, is sent to collect Marcus Montague - the original badman - and take him to Hell, she finds herself powerfully drawn to him and makes a decision that places her in the middle of a war between Heaven and Hell. Can Serafina fall in love without falling from grace? Can Marcus's soul be saved? And just who is the mysterious and ever-so-helpful stranger Harry?Angel Dust delivers exactly what the cover shows - a gritty and urban angel story, far darker than most of the other angel books out there. I don't think that it delivers much more than that, I don't think that the romance was fantastic and I'll get into that later, but I do love the ideas it puts across about humanity and about growing up.

I didn't enjoy the romance in this book. Marcus just did not grow on me, he was too rough I didn't like the way he spoke and though I like a unique love interest, Marcus didn't seem to even care about Serafina, it was like he was awed by her because she was an angel but then he doesn't really care about her for her personality and then it goes from arguing to making out with little to no development. I liked Serafina, but she seemed to fall in love so quickly, and to be honest I don't really get why... What was so special about Marcus that she'd fall in love at first sight. I also thought that Serafina was inconsistent, so was naive at some points and then could completely understand Marcus' ghetto jargo on the next page.

Though I didn't like how gritty Marcus was as a character, I love the whole setting of the book. This is pure urban fantasy- it takes place in a very urban setting. I love the gang culture and how well it seems to be described, I don't know how authentic it was since I have never witnessed real life gang culture but it seemed very real. I also love the ideas that Mussi puts across using this gang culture, she uses it as a metaphor for how very corrupt humanity is and the whole setting and grittiness of it was very unique. It wasn't dark in a spooky, horror, supernatural kind of way. It was dark in a 'the darkest places of humanity' way.

The story isn't amazingly gripping until the end. The twists which were supposed to be shocking were pretty predictable, I knew who Larry was from as soon as we meet him, and I had guessed the truth about Sera's archangel friend. It was original to have a main character as an angel and a mortal love interest and it meant we could get descriptions of heaven, which were so quirky! Angels having parties and going to angel school and having choirs was so quirky and funny, I loved that.

Overall, I enjoyed Angel Dust but never felt particularly invested in the story. I liked the morals and the grittiness and the setting, and I also liked the originality of having an angel MC, however the characters and the twists could have been stronger, to make me gripped and emotionally attached to the characters.

Overall Rating: C-Book released August 2nd by Hot Key BooksBook received in exchange for an honest review